The ambassadors of Ukraine and Georgia, Ruslan Spirin and Zurab Eristav, respectively, shared their views about their countries’ relationship with the European Union and Russia.

Ruslan Spirin detailed the issues preventing his country from joining the European Union, particularly, Russia’s illegal occupation of their territory which is threatening their sovereignty. Ukraine started the negotiations for an economic package leading to its entry into the European Union a few years ago.  However, Russia has blocked those negotiations with various hostile tactics, namely the occupation of Sebastopol and Crimea and the alleged bombing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 by its missiles.

Russia’s Threatening Role

The ambassador Zurab Eristavi also pointed out that Russia is a threat to the world’s stability, and it seeks to polarize the globe into two fronts. He indicated that the Russian strategy of maintaining a geopolitical order by preserving areas of influence and their military presence is causing a problem for Georgia because the European Union cannot expand to areas of instability and danger.  He also mentioned NATO’s importance in defending countries that are being attacked by Russian politics. According to him, Georgia will meet all the necessary requirements for entry to the European Union in ten years, but they will be overshadowed by Russian intentions to retain political dominance in the Georgian region. In their closing remarks, they both agreed that despite the disturbances affecting the European Union and their countries in the past few months, this political project continues to strengthen its members through multilateral cooperation.

ANUNCIO